The wine with the worst carbon footprint in history?

I am happy to use other web sources as an inspiration for my blog posts here, but I have until now refused to steal a blog-post title from any of them. However, this time I could not help myself. The above title has been stolen unashamedly from Alder Yarrow’s Vinography page. It perfectly sums up what I have to say in this post.

The subject is the rash of recent multi-continent blended wines being released. It is all very well to swoon over the multi-regional taste sensation, but the environmental consequences of the movement of grapes/wines between continents, in order to make the finished product, should not be overlooked. Sustainability is supposed to be a modern priority, both in the vineyard and winery, and it is difficult to see how these blends can be sustainable in the long term.

Before I proceed, some people might get the idea that the movement of grapes/wines before blending is, in principle, no different from afterwards moving the finished wines for sale. That is, the energy expended in wine movement is simply transferred from “before blending” to “after blending”. However, this is too simplistic. There is no getting around the fact that there is at least one extra global movement involved, for at least some part of the wine. In the modern world, this can matter.

So, it is this extra movement of the ingredients, and its consequent increase in the carbon footprint of the wine-making, that is at issue in this post. We all know about carbon over-production and its connection to Global Climate Change (or Global Warming, as it used to be called: You were first warned about global warming 110 years ago), and so I will not belabor the point again here. If we and our children are to have a good future, things need to change, now.

The latest culprit wine (as referred to in the title) is this one: Michel Rolland launches multi-continent Bordeaux blend. Here, we have:

A new winemaking project that brings together Bordeaux grape varieties from five different countries worldwide, creating an uber-blend called Pangaea that clocks in at €500 per bottle, with 2,500 bottles produced per year. Each variety in the blend comes from a single place of origin – namely Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, Merlot from Right Bank Bordeaux, Petit Verdot from Dehesa del Carrizal “Vino de Pago” in Spain, Cabernet Franc from Helderberg, South Africa and Malbec from Valle de Uco, Argentina.

The alleged rationale for this blended wine is “the idea of highlighting the terroirs of the world, and how they interconnect”. Robert Joseph has already played devil’s advocate here (Defending Michel Rolland’s five-nation wine blend): “All that matters is how Pangaea tastes. If it’s good — and I’m betting it will be — others will follow and, who knows, in a decade, there will be lots of affordable multi-national blends that will be giving lots of people lots of pleasure.” Well, this is the exact opposite of what I am arguing here.

First, I doubt that mixing these terroirs together would highlight anything for me, personally. If I did want to study this topic, then I would sit down with a bottle of each individual wine, and do a direct comparison using five different glasses. Then I might learn something.

Second, and more importantly, energy expenditure has recently become a high-lighted issue in the wine industry. Glass bottles, for example, are energy-intensive to produce, and alternative packaging has been discussed (The problem with wine bottles) — even recycling glass is very energy-intensive. * The host of other issues has been discussed elsewhere (Carbon footprints, wine and the consumer).

Third, of course, the movement of grapes/wine between regions has been frowned upon under other circumstances. For example, we have recently had this report (What Marlborough’s new wine map says about its future):

Weather events in recent vintages have resulted in reduced yields. They’ve hit small to medium-sized producers especially hard, as many have found themselves with a demand-over-supply issue. To fill the gap, an increased number of rogue operators, keen to profit from the Marlborough name, have swooped in. The companies buy wines in bulk — sometimes from fruit grown outside of Marlborough and often farmed above the region’s cropping and disease thresholds — and bottle them overseas.

So, this new multi-continental blending could be a risky precedent to be setting. Jane Anson has listed some of the other recent blends of similar type:

This project joins recent multi-region wines such as the Penfolds’ Wines of the World released in 2021 which contain grapes from both Napa and Australia, and the Penfolds II Cabernet Shiraz Merlot, a joint venture with Vignobles Dourthe whose inaugural 2019 vintage contained 71% grapes from Bordeaux and 29% from South Australia, blended and bottled in Australia. Back in 2010, James Suckling also created a blend called One Wine One World that assembled grapes from California, Mexico, Hungary, Slovenia, Roussillon and Italy, sold in aid of a charitable foundation.

Look, I don't give a rat’s rear-end about the alleged motivation for these things — however, you don’t address one issue by creating a different one. I am as favorable towards charitable work as anyone else (and I do do my own little personal bit), but I also care about the planet that I live on; and we should not sacrifice the latter to carry out the former.

After all, we have also been told that: “48% of US based beverage alcohol drinkers’ purchasing habits are positively influenced by a company's sustainability or environmental initiatives” (Beverage alcohol retailers place strategic bets on sustainably focused emerging brands). Doesn’t this give everyone a hint about where the customers think that the future lies?

So, can we please get all wine-makers to recognize that, in the modern world, the wine industry is supposed to be decreasing its carbon footprint, not finding unnecessary ways to increase it? ** We have been told: “As a business, the wine industry sucks. Fires, floods, droughts, local laws, distribution issues, insect infestations, changing consumer tastes — it’s just all so awful.” Isn’t this bad enough? We don't need to make it worse for ourselves.

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* You might also like to check out: Label-less wine launched.

** The concept of “carbon offsets” also has its difficulties (see: The carbon offset problem).